I guess those companies needed some US company's approved FCC license and Audiovox might have been the cheaper outlet!!!.Since you mention that yeah it is funny Audiovox never made the hardware and they just seem to be the third-party distributor..lol

Makes me wonder why these phones are not making it over. Is it a simple issue of the FCC being uncoorperative or do these phones need some tweaks in the design ares say less radiation etc? Either way they have a leg up on the looks and features side and I would like to see some real competition come to our shores.

I don't think it is the good old radiation deal anymore.It is mostly the new E911 problems.Have you read the article on how VZW and Qualcomm found out the hard way the E911 has glitches and a big oops has to be fixed? FCC wants to make sure these units REALLY work with the new E911 requirements and they just don't want to open themselves up for any legal issues down the road.

I believe a non-US company can get FCC approval (many of the phones that never officially make it to the US from non-US manufacturers have FCC approval stickers). But a large manufacturer/re-brander with a strong US presence will have an easier time selling carriers on a phone than a company like AnexTek, and can offer the level of support carriers require.

My two cents:

1) Carriers are still the biggest retail outlet for phones. The economy going south seems to have scared them away from high end Pocket PC phones-- that's why the XDA II isn't sold here *sigh* Though these phones are often purchased by power users who crave high end features.

2) Samsung is making some really, really lovely Pocket PC phones for Korea, but they haven't made it here yet. Verizon has a strong agreement with Samsung, so they'll get these phones before Sprint. However, Verizon takes eons to test and qualify phones *grr*

3) There are some seemingly really nice overseas Asian Pocket PC phones and some low end ones. The Audiovox PPC4100 and Eten P300 are examples of the low end phones. Carriers think budget is the way to go right now, but sometimes these budget phones have more problems or need more tweaking before they come to the US.

I think the PPC4100 is pretty solid, esp. with GPRS working in the US (I've heard the original AnexTek has problems with GRPS in the US). But it still seems to not have great RF, has low speaker volume and the first ones out the gate from AT&T are supposedly prone to hangs.

I've got an Eten P300B for review right now, and it will be marketed in the US soon by FutureComGlobal. It definitely needs some tweaking before a US carrier would touch it! *ouch*

I agree. For me its about quality and construction when it comes to converged technology. Of course I would like a little more horsepower and memory under the hood too but I am will to pay for it. They do need to cater to the two markets those who are willing to pay and those who are not just like they do with regular phones.

While I applaud Verizon's goal of super high quality testing it causes such delays that by the time they launch a product its really behind since they need to get enough ROI on it.

Well, here's the latest..I went in this evening to return my 4100..and the Store Manager told me AT&TW has advised them to stop selling 4100 and return them all back to Audiovox...So..there goes that marriage..divorces are ugly..aren't they?

No..they just ain't selling that any more!!!.AT&TW is negotiating with Audiovox Is what he was told and to tell the customers...we are not selling the Audiovox 4100 PPC any more..He was instructed to ship any units they have back to Audiovox and not back to AT&TW warehouse.

Since the XDA II is sold worldwide, it ships with several different ROM versions supporting different languages. If you have a European model, it may support English. Check the Regional Settings control panel to see what languages are available. You may also need to do a hard reset to get a language selection dialog. If English isn't installed on your unit, you'd need to re-flash the unit with WWE 1.66 (the latest World Wide English) ROM. This can be found on www.xda-developers.com .